Our Prime Minister said last year that obesity is becoming a grave crisis for our nation. And yet, Indians are not taking notice. As Vijay Jadhav notes in this article: “Only one in 10 Indians exercised on a given day in 2024, according to the Time Use Survey by the National Statistics Office (NSO). Exercise participation…remains close to the 8% recorded in the 1998 survey conducted by the Central Statistical Organisation.”
As expected, men & city dwellers get more time to exercise than women and villagers: “Men were nearly three times more likely to exercise than women—14.5% of men reported exercising on a given day compared with 4.9% of women—and participation was higher in cities than in villages. Rural women reported the lowest levels of exercise. Of those who did exercise, men spent an average of 60 minutes, while women spent 56 minutes.
About 14% Indians in cities reported exercising, spending about 61 minutes on average, compared with 7% in rural areas”
While much of this accords with our mental model of a lethargic nation which struggles to climb the Olympic podium, there are a few other findings from this survey which are startling: “Exercise increased with education levels, and improved across all levels since 2019. In 2024, one in four postgraduates (26%) reported exercising, up from 16% in 2019…
A 2020 Lancet Child & Adolescent Health study found that India…reported some of the lowest levels of physical activity among adolescent boys and girls compared to other regions…
Variations also persisted across caste groups. In 2024, 13.3% of people in the ‘others’ category reported exercising on the reference day, compared with 9.1% for Other Backward Classes, 7.9% for Scheduled Castes, and 6.9% for Scheduled Tribes…
Exercise participation also increased with household spending. In 2024, about 17% Indians from families that spent more than Rs 24,000 per month exercised on the reference day, compared to 8.4% for those who spent up to Rs 6,500 per month…
In 2024, Goa (24.1%), Himachal Pradesh (21.5%), and Haryana (17.5%) recorded the highest activity levels, while Maharashtra (14.6%) and Karnataka (13.7%) were above the national average of 9.7%” [As per the infographics shown in the article, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Rajasthan and UP are among the states that exercise the least.
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